Liam Barr

A transition. A season. A chapter closing. Not meant to be.
There's a whole vocabulary for loss and none of it mentions losing anything.
Words with the edges rounded off so the thing sounds survivable.

You use them because the real sentence is hard to say out loud.

It's gone. You wanted it. You don't get it back.

Every padded word leaves a door propped open. A version where it isn't final after all.
So you keep checking the door instead of grieving what happened.

The loss doesn't care which words you pick. It already happened.
The only thing your wording changes is how long you argue with it.

Say the real one once and mean it.
Then there's nothing left to negotiate.

You've been here before.
Not this exact trouble but this exact feeling.
The one where you can't see how it resolves.

And it resolved.

Not neatly. Not on your schedule.
But you're on the other side of it now, telling the story like you always knew.
You didn't know. Nobody knows in the middle.

That's the part worth keeping.
Things work out.
And you have never once been able to see it coming.

So the dread about how this one ends is running on the same faulty instrument it ran on every other time.

Feels like this one's different?
It always does. It never is.

The engine is off and the song isn't finished so you sit there in the driveway with the keys still in your hand.
Two minutes. Maybe three.

Volume up. Head banging.
Singing the wrong words with total confidence.

Then the song ends.
You go inside and become normal again.

Three minutes is the allowance.
Then the hand goes to the dial and you turn yourself back down to a reasonable level.

Nobody set that limit.
You've been quiet on your own authority this whole time.